The politics of marriage and family breakdown - 8/16/07

[Smartmarriages]

- CITY WITHOUT FATHERS
- THE AMERICAN FAMILY DIVIDE

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- CITY WITHOUT FATHERS
City Without Fathers
Behind Newark¹s epidemic violence are its thousands of fatherless children.
Steven Malanga
9 August 2007 

The horrific, execution-style killing of three teens in Newark last weekend
has sparked widespread outrage and promises of reform from politicians,
religious leaders, and community activists, who are pledging a renewed
campaign against the violence that plagues New Jersey¹s largest city. But
much of the reaction, though well-intentioned, misses the point. Behind
Newark¹s persistent violence and deep social dysfunction is a profound
cultural shift that has left many of the city¹s children growing up outside
the two-parent family‹and in particular, growing up without fathers. Decades
of research tell us that such children are far likelier to fail in school
and work and to fall into violence than those raised in two-parent families.
In Newark, we are seeing what happens to a community when the traditional
family comes close to disappearing.

According to 2005 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, only 32 percent of
Newark children are being raised by their parents in a two-adult household.
The rest are distributed among families led by grandparents, foster parents,
and single parents ‹ mostly mothers. An astonishing 60 percent of the city¹s
kids are growing up without fathers. It isn¹t that traditional families are
breaking up; they aren¹t even getting started. The city has one of the
highest out-of-wedlock birthrates in the country, with about 65 percent of
its children born to unmarried women. And 70 percent of those births are to
women who are already poor, meaning that their kids are born directly into
poverty.

The economic consequences of these numbers are unsettling, since single
parenthood is a road to lasting poverty in America today. In Newark, single
parents head 83 percent of all families living below the poverty line. If
you are a child born into a single-parent family in Newark, your chances of
winding up in poverty are better than one in five, but if you are born into
a two-parent family, those chances drop to just one in twelve.

And the social consequences are even more disturbing. Research conducted in
the 1990s found that a child born out of wedlock was three times more likely
to drop out of school than the average child, and far more likely to wind up
on welfare as an adult. Studies have also found that about 70 percent of the
long-term prisoners in our jails, those who have committed the most violent
crimes, grew up without fathers.

The starkness of these statistics MAKES IT ASTONISHING THAT OUR POLITICIANS
AND POLICY MAKERS IGNORE THE SUBJECT OF SINGLE PARENTHOOD, as if it were
outside the realm of civic discourse. And our religious leaders, who once
preached against such behavior, now also largely avoid the issue, even as
they call for prayer vigils and organize stop-the-violence campaigns in
Newark. Often, in this void, the only information that our teens and young
adults get on the subject of marriage, children, and family life comes
through media reports about the lifestyles of our celebrity entertainers and
athletes, who have increasingly shunned matrimony and traditional families.
Once, such news might have been considered scandalous; today, it is reported
matter-of-factly, as if these pop icons¹ lives were the norm.

Faced with such a profound shift in attitudes, even well-designed,
well-intentioned government programs that have worked elsewhere may have
only limited success in a community like Newark. The city¹s dynamic new
mayor, Cory Booker, has moved quickly to import successful ideas and
programs <http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_cory_booker.html> ,
including rigorous quality-of-life policing from New York City. Booker is
advocating sensible changes to fix the city¹s troubled school system, which
graduates a shockingly low number of students, and he¹s looking at job
training programs to get fathers involved, at least economically, in their
children¹s lives.

But Booker has also shown frustration at the slow pace of change in Newark,
and earlier this week he observed that the city¹s problems didn¹t start
yesterday and won¹t be solved tomorrow. Given that some 3,750 kids are born
every year into fatherless Newark families, Booker¹s prediction may be
depressingly correct.
 
[[And, mayor Booker isn't recommending marriage programs....is he even using
the M word? Mentioning marriage? Why doesn't City Jrnl take him to task for
this? And, why the delicacy in the headline?!  Why "City Without Fathers"?
Why not "City Without Marriage?" The city is full of Fathers. These children
aren't 'fatherless', they're marriage-less. With Kay Hymowitz author of
Marriage and Caste in American at City Jrnl, you'd think they'd be better
clued in.  How we write about the issues is key.  I suggest you all click on
the link below and send City Journal a reply. Maybe we should wait for part
II of the Mcmanus series below, but most of you could write Part II, anyway
and timeliness is important. - diane]]

 <http://www.city-journal.org/index.html>


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- THE AMERICAN FAMILY DIVIDE

August 15, 2007
Column #1,355
³The American Family Divide²
(Part I of a two-part series)
by Mike McManus
 
Why are the ³Blue States² of the Northeast and the West Coast so liberal and
the ³Red States² of the South and the lower Midwest so conservative?

Which states have approved of gay marriage? Only Massachusetts but gay civil
unions, which is marriage without the name, were approved in the Blue States
of Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey. ³Domestic Partnerships,²
which are virtual civil unions, have been passed by California, Washington,
Hawaii and Oregon.

On the other hand, 27 states have approved constitutional amendments to
limit marriage to one man and one woman. They include every southern state
from South Carolina across to Texas, then straight north through the Midwest
to North Dakota and Montana plus other mountain states of Idaho, Utah,
Colorado and even Nevada ­ Red States.

Why is there such a marriage division in America?  ³The Red/Blue American
Family Divide² report in the ³State of the Unions 2007" notes the marriage
rate of Arkansas, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah is TWO to THREE times that of
Northeastern states! Those four Red States have between 58 and 77 weddings
per 1,000 single women.

At the bottom of the marriage barrel are Pennsylvania with only 24 marriages
per 1000 women, New Jersey (27), Delaware and Connecticut at 28.

³Higher marriage rates are associated with less non-marital cohabitation,
and this also clusters geographically along Red/Blue lines,² writes David
Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead in the Red/Blue report of the National
Marriage Project at Rutgers.

Only 6 percent of Alabama residents are cohabiting and 8 percent each in
Mississippi, Kansas and Arkansas. Twice as many are cohabiting in Vermont
(14 percent), Maine (13 percent), and Oregon plus Washington State at 12
percent.

Similarly, the states with the highest fertility are Red States of Idaho,
with 77 births per 1,000 women plus Kansas and Georgia at 70 babies.
Compare that to Vermont at 51; Maine, 54 and Massachusetts, 57.

By contrast, the states with the highest abortion rates are Blue and their
rates are six to THIRTY-NINE times higher than Red pro-life states, such as
Wyoming with only one abortion per 1,000 women, and Kentucky at 5.3, South
Dakota¹s 5.5, Mississippi at 6.0 and Missouri, 6.6 Compare those numbers
with what Heritage Foundation¹s Pat Fagan called ³the pro-death states:² New
York at 39 per 1,000, New Jersey, 36.3; Delaware, 31.1 and California, 31.2.

³Put it all together, these demographic characteristics add up to the more
married couples with children in the Red states and fewer in the Blue
states, and this is one of the biggest reasons for the Red/Blue political
divide,² write Popenoe and Whitehead.

³For recent elections the correlation between married-with-children and
voting Republican is one of the highest ever found between demographic
factors and voting behavior.²

Every Democratic Presidential candidate favors repealing the Defense of
Marriage Act, though it was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996.  The
law limits marriage to heterosexual couples, and would block Social Security
payments  to survivors of gay marriage.

However, there are moral chinks in the armor of the Red States, which have
the highest divorce rates and the highest percentages of babies born
out-of-wedlock.  Half of the babies born in Mississippi and Louisiana are to
unwed parents ­ which is double the rate of New Hampshire.

A complicating factor is the extremely high black rate of 77 percent and the
50 percent rate of Hispanics.  The white rate of unwed births in Mississippi
is 26 percent, lower than New Hampshire¹s 27 percent.

Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are tied for the lowest divorce rates at 11
divorces per 1,000 married couples per year, while Arkansas and Oklahoma are
more than twice as high at 25 divorces each per 1,000, and West Virginia, at
23.

I asked David Popenoe why the divorce rate is so low in Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania. He replied, those states are ³ highly educated, who tend to
have lower divorce rates. They are also more Catholic, which has an effect.²
Indeed, half of Massachusetts residents and a third of Pennsylvanians are
Catholic..

His report explains a lot.  However, it does not predict who will win future
elections.

According to the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, only 28 percent of Americans
view Republicans favorably, and by nearly 20 points, respondents would like
to see a Democratic President in the White House. In 2004, Republican
candidates won a majority of Independents, but lost their vote by 18 percent
in 2006.

What can Presidential candidates do to capture more of the family vote?

Offer proposals to strengthen marriage. Next week I will suggest some
initiatives.

Copyright 2007 Michael J. McManus

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